ABSTRACT
Pericentromeric Regions .................................................................................................. 238 13.4 Effects of Changes in DNA Methylation on Chromosome Structure:
Interspersed Repeats and Nonrepeated Regions.............................................................. 241 13.5 Some Mechanistic Considerations for Effects of DNA Methylation
on Chromosome Stability ................................................................................................ 242 13.6 Effects of DNA Sequence and Chromosome Position on Cancer-Linked
DNA Methylation Changes ............................................................................................. 243 References ..................................................................................................................................... 245
There are intimate relationships between the two faces of vertebrate epigenetics, methylation of DNA cytosine residues at the 5-position and changes in the structure or non-DNA composition of chromatin that are inherited from cell to cell and, sometimes, parent to progeny. Chromatin epigenetics for vertebrates and higher plants includes histone modification (acetylation, methylation, phosphorylation, ubiquitation, and sumoylation) [1-4]; the composition of tightly bound nonhistone proteins, special noncoding RNAs, and histone variants [5-9]; chromatin higher-order structure [10-13]; and the distribution of chromatin in the nucleus [14-17]. There are interrelationships between all of these aspects of chromatin structure.
